Gifted… Or not?

I am in the lookout for writing a book. But the problem is what to write? What is it that I want to say badly? How am I going to say it and say it for long enough that I am able to fill up at least 200 pages talking about it. What is it that takes my breath away!

I am still searching for it. And while I am doing that I keep reading about people coming up with books after books on their ideas of the world around them and they come up really fast. I am simply amazed at their speed. Really!! Like how fast are you guys!?

I don’t know a time when a Chetan Bhagat book or a Shashi Tharoor book is not in the way out to get published. And no idea then how do they find time to appear in so many talk shows and air their opinions on so many issues going on around via various mediums. Really! No idea. Especially when Tharoor is a mantri for heaven sakes! He must have so many other things to deal with apart from writing books. Well, I am not really into criticizing here but I definitely want to understand the pattern in this if there is any.

Are they really the ones with much more knowledge and grey matter or are they just like one of us with better resources? If it’s the resources which are the differentiator then there is so much here to fight for. Fight – not by proving nonsense as logic, not by applying quota politics where I somehow become deserving for something I did nothing to claim possession on, but – by trying and trying harder on a daily basis to get those resources so that I too become someone who matters, is heard and valued even when I am not making much sense sometimes.

But, what if it’s really that they are the ones who are gifted, and not just their lifestyles but their education and everything else that followed is a result of something they already are and these things just added to what was already there which is the cause of all that is different between them and the masses? Then what? Then is there still much left to fight for or to look forward to for someone like me who looks upto these people? Someone who wants to follow in their footsteps and be able to be somewhere closer to who they are, what about us? Can we somehow work hard and become who we would like ourselves to be or is it that the life was doomed the day we were born – ungifted and just plain ordinary?

Amazing is the new Normal

Read somewhere – “If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.”

I think that’s something that doesn’t seem to be working in favour of the corporate career these days with many individuals who find themselves trapped in the daily routine stressful life on offer when working in any standard MNC company and the fact that there are quite a few of us who are employed with them – the fact that the life achievable by a nice corporate career is at most – normal.

How can normal be not enough. Some of you may call me completely out of my mind to suggest that the idea of a normal life is something people may be ready to easily let go of. I agree, it isn’t so easy. And nobody knows it better than me (3 months notice with absolutely no work to do is pretty much close to hell for me). Corporate life has been till date my only tool to claim my freedom and independence from the world too ready to dictate its terms and conditions to the extent of bullying you to death for not complying. Out of the many advantages of having a career is the fact that work or no work, you receive a pre determined sum of money assured at the end of every month as a sign that you belong and that you are being compensated for everything that you mean to a certain set of people. Add to it the fact that you get to plan your day around it giving it some semblance of an organised way of living. Not just your day, you get to plan ahead for your life – your next car, the big house, the readiness of the banks to give you loans, latest laptops, cell phones, lavish dinners, movies at the mall, weekend shopping and the list can go on. Your job makes all these things possible for you from the moment you step out of your college – a luxury that was not so easily available to our parents, the ones we saw our whole lives working hard to achieve all those things that are so easily available to us now. Of course that’s what makes it even more clear to us why this is an ideal way to live life when there are people we know spent their whole lives just to be in our shoes.

Agreed !! But then some of us are not happy. Some of us in the corner of our daily lives have started to feel that its not enough. That if the whole life is spent only trying to attempt a normal life then it is in a way an injustice to the mind that has been allotted to us which may be capable of experiencing much more than what we make ourselves eligible for in our struggle to attempt this normal life.

I still remember how I swore off against HR function while choosing for my MBA stream post clearing CAT just because the undertone of the suggestion sounded as if the challenge of normal life was perceived to be so huge in my case (like taming of my revolting behaviour to suit my future mother-in-law’s liking, getting married, bearing children, et al) that the choice of a mediocre course would have somehow compensated for the big deal that life was supposedly about to become for me. Though I chose Finance for myself, but more than becoming a specific stream person, I concentrated all my energies on becoming a better manager instead, of life and everything else.

After MBA, I finally graduated from a banker-wannabe to a banker. And like every other graduate I too was mesmerised by the dangling shiny pendulum of riches and add to that the fact that the moment you are hired, people start thinking of you as some kind of a financial whiz and expect you to know anything and everything even remotely associated with the word ‘bank’ and ‘finance’ and you are forced to follow the line because it feels cool to belong. More like the Brahmin of the society of ‘normals’. Even my fb pics showed the expression of ‘inner peace’ every single time. I don’t know where was this coming from. I entered the scene, worked like a horse, tried learning as much as possible about finance, did great PowerPoint presentations and Excel creations, lengthened my resume for many to sit up and take notice. But eventually, gave up on forcing myself to live the lie any longer.

Working unusually long hours, to put up with abnormally high levels of stress and sacrificing personal time to be able to live something that has been constantly failing to define me for myself did not seem like a great idea any longer (Yes, the money part is a lie too. It is usually reserved for a select few, the rest just follow the market standards and that too at a very high ‘cost’). When you hear stories like people teaming up to create entrepreneurial opportunities for people from Himalayas migrating in large numbers in search of work, a great man pumping artificial blood into the sanitary pad he is wearing in order to do his research on female requirements from a great sanitary napkin just so that he can sell it to them for free, someone converting their love for games into becoming a video games company creating 52 games, spending 6 years and achieving nothing but eventually becoming the most popular of them all with just one game which was the 53rd one in the list.

When you go through such stories of the lives of the individuals who just got bored with the normal life, you know your chosen path may be risky but it will sure be worth every penny spent.

New age Housewife

Well, I have decided to quit (I am talking about my corporate career and not what you thought at first)… Finally! Yes, that has been long pending and finally I seem to have taken the plunge. Not that I am not a risk taker, I am. Its just that the idea of making myself reach somewhere and then calling it quits in the middle (in some sense it is the middle) seemed ill prepared and sort of unlike me (atleast I think it isn’t me). Anyways, its not about the whys and hows of my quitting business. Its about what I discover as I start on the adventure trip of my life that I (may be) have set foot on via exposing myself to joblessness (thats going to be tough. God help Sumit), raised eyebrows (you know them who love to stereotype you), smirks (hah ! another housewife bites the dust… we knew!) and what not. Frankly saying, it wasn’t easy at all. Putting my papers down hours before I left for my honeymoon with no back up plan in place, then coming back and applying for jobs I no longer believed were worth wasting my time on, reading and preparing for interviews which totally sucked as I hate hate hate rejections, eating my husband’s brains for every possibility that he may show aversion to my idea of independence or foolhardiness, who knows which one.

In any case, here I am, 20 days shy of complete freedom from the utterly worthless corporate world and totally determined to make the most of whatever that I have set to achieve even though I may not be totally sure what is it exactly that I am looking for or asking from this world to share with me.

For starters, I need some exploration and me time, especially after a really hectic gone year. Me time definitely required me catching on with whats happening around the world. Politics, society, businesses, people, etc. Which means lots and lots and lots of reading. And though reading is my favourite hobby and something I miss the most when I am stressed, it can get a bit too much and you have to mix it with things so that life doesn’t lose its colors. So while I was busy adding my own shades and checking contents on the internet I chanced upon some really cool websites online with refreshingly new ideas. They are so imaginative, quirky, never-done-before and useful that
I am beginning to say to myself that probably Startups may be my thing. But before anybody gets a heart attack, I have just given it a thought and its still in the nascent stages. Please don’t start interrogating me on my future cashflow management strategy!

Anyways, back to the cool websites. Here is a list of what I found to be absolutely cool and refreshing. Hope you guys will have fun!!

– http://planmy.travel/: The service connects travellers with experts who have knowledge about destinations and various activities. Based on the traveller’s request, the expert customizes a personalized trip itinerary, and clarifies all questions thereafter – entirely online.

– http://www.weareholidays.co.in/: Holiday recommendation engine

– http://indiauntravelled.com/: offbeat rural getaways

– http://roomlion.com/: portal for finding and booking short term rentals in India – with special emphasis on serviced apartments

– http://youandindia.in/: a unique concept for creating a platform for travellers in India, in order to make them feel safe and secure and help them realize everything that they aspired for, before travelling to India.

– http://exotel.in/: Exotel provides businesses a smart virtual phone number to manage their calls & SMS, with smart applications such as IVR, Missed Call, Call Recording and more.

– https://mettl.com/: Powerful online assessment platform for hiring, training, contests

– http://eko.co.in/: Banking services at affordable costs to vast sections of disadvantaged and low income groups

– http://www.limeroad.com/: India’s most extensive lifestyle platform for Women’s shopping

– http://www.streak.com/: Chrome/Gmail plugin that allows you to manage your outbound sales funnel from within your inbox

– http://housing.com/in/: Map based real estate portal